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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

VATICAN CITY, 18 MAY 2010 (VIS) - The twenty-fourth plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Laity will take place in Rome from 20 to 22 May on the theme: "Witnesses to Christ in the political community".

A communique on the event explains how "Benedict XVI has, on various occasions, highlighted the pressing need for a renewed commitment of Catholics in political life".

The plenary will be inaugurated by Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and is scheduled to include three lectures: Lorenzo Ornaghi, rector of the Sacred Heart Catholic University in Milan, Italy, will speak on "politics and democracy today: 'status quaestionis'"; Cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the "Cultural Project" of the Italian Episcopal Conference, will examine the topic of "Church and political community: certain vital points"; finally Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, will speak on "the responsibility of the lay faithful in political life".

The assembly will also include two reports, one by Andrea Riccardi, founder of the St. Egidio Community, on "what the great Christian figures in the history of politics have to say to us today"; and the second by Guzman Carriquiry, under secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, who will discuss "criteria and methods for the formation of the lay faithful in politics".

The participants will be received in audience by the Pope on Friday 21 May.

On the afternoon of Saturday 22 May, Bishop Joseph Clemens, secretary of the pontifical council, will consider the dicastery's achievements and explain its programmes for the future.

- Appointed Fr. Kieran O'Reilly S.M.A., superior general of the Society of African Missions, as bishop of Killaloe (area 4,523, population 133,201, Catholics 122,746, priests 132, religious 125), Ireland. The bishop-elect was born in Cork, Ireland in 1952 and ordained a priest in 1978. He succeeds Bishop William Walsh, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.

- Appointed Msgr. Salvador Cristau Coll, vicar general of the diocese of Terrassa, Spain, as auxiliary of the same diocese (area 1,197, population 1,241,332, Catholics 1,218,420, priests 186, permanent deacons 7, religious 671). The bishop-elect was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1950 and ordained a priest in 1980.
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